He leaned back toward the others. “There are two or three men inside the tent,” he whispered. “We’ll go in right below, on the back side. Moore-you cut us a doorway, then step to the left. It’ll have to be fast. I’ll go in first, then Puckett, and you follow us. I’ll cover the left side; Puckett, you take the right; and Moore covers the front. We go in with guns, not knives-we don’t want anyone even to think about calling for reinforcements.”
Both men nodded. Drawing his knife, Moore inched down the last stretch of slope, feetfirst, his back to the rock. His Beretta drawn, Rodgers set out behind him with Puckett bringing up the rear.
Upon reaching the bottom, Moore waited for the others. The three men crouched in the relative dark behind the tent, Rodgers listening as Moore crept over.
“… will find that I have a great deal of support here,” someone was saying. “Your own people made this possible. Reunification, like remarriage, is a precious notion, but ultimately impractical.”
The South Koreans have obviously taken over here, Rodgers thought. He watched as Moore rose slowly beside the tent, the long knife in his left hand, pointing down and ready to strike. Rodgers made his way over, Puckett behind him, both crouched on the balls of their feet, ready to jump in.
If only he knew who was the infiltrator and who was the DPRK officer. He would kill the former without hesitation.
Moore nodded once, then pushed the hilt bottom with his right hand. The blade tore through the fabric, Moore pulled down, and then he stepped aside. Rodgers leapt through, stepping to the left and pointing his gun at the Colonel sitting on the cot: he was bald and holding a bloody cloth around his hand. From his wound, and the fact that he was unarmed, Rodgers knew at once that this was the North Korean officer and that he was a prisoner of the other two. Puckett jumped through, pointing his gun at the officer standing on the right side of the tent. He grabbed the Type 64 pistol before it could be fired and put his own Beretta to the Colonel’s forehead.
Moore came in next as Kong, beside the front flap, held up his left hand and dropped the Type 64 he was holding in it. His gun pointed at the big orderly’s head, Moore stooped to pick up the gun.
His right hand behind him, Kong whipped the TT33 Tokarev from his belt and fired into Moore’s left eye. The soldier fell back and Kong aimed at Puckett.
Rodgers had been watching Kong, and when he saw the big man’s right hand slip behind his back, he had swung his own gun around. The General was not quick enough to save Moore, but he put a bullet into Kong’s forehead before he could fire at Puckett. The orderly crumpled to the floor of the tent, slumped against the flap, causing it to bulge out.
Puckett’s jaw was set like iron, his eyes aflame. “Don’t you move, dirtbag.”
Rodgers heard soldiers yelling outside. He looked down at the officer on the cot.
“I’ve got to trust you,” Rodgers said, not sure he was being understood. “We need those missiles stopped.”
He made a point of aiming the gun away and stepped back. He motioned for Ki-Soo to rise.
The officer bowed slightly.
“You traitors!” Colonel Sun shouted. “See how a patriot dies!”
Sun reached forward and pulled Puckett’s arm toward him. Reacting as he’d been trained to do in an attack situation, the Private fired. Sun groaned, folded at the middle, and fell at Puckett’s feet.
Rodgers dropped to his side and felt for a pulse. “He’s gone,” he said. He turned to Moore. He had known that the Private was dead, but picked up his wrist anyway. He pulled a blanket from the cot and handed it to Puckett, who draped it over Moore’s body.
“Colonel,” Rodgers said, “do you speak English?”
Ki-Soo shook his head.
“Pu-t’ak hamnida,” Rodgers used one of the few Korean words he knew. “Please. The Nodongs-Tokyo.”
Ki-Soo nodded as soldiers appeared in the doorway. He held them back with a raised hand and barked command. Then he pointed to the dead man.
He said a word Rodgers didn’t recognize. Then the Colonel thought for a moment and said, “Il ha-na, i tul, sam set….”
“One, two, three,” Rodgers said. “You’re counting. Countdown? No-you’d go backward.”
“Chil il-gop, sa net, il ha-na…” Ki-Soo continued.
“Seven, four, one-a code? The password?” Rodgers felt a chill run up and down his back. He pointed to the dead officer. “You’re telling me that he changed the passwords. That’s why he killed himself, so we can’t get them out of him.” He thought quickly. The Nodong circuitry was in a box rigged to fire the missile if tampered with. There was no way to stop them unless they got the code. “How long?” Rodgers asked. “On-che-im-ni-ka?”
Ki-Soo looked at one of the soldiers standing in the door. He asked him the same question, and the soldier answered.
The only word Rodgers recognized was “ship yol”
Ten.
They had ten minutes until the three Nodongs were fired toward Tokyo.
Quickly he used Ki-Soo’s radio to call Squires and asked to be patched into the TAC SAT.
EIGHTY-ONE
Wednesday, 7:20 P.M., Op-Center
Hood and his top aides were still in his office when the call came through from Rodgers. Hood put it on speaker and the others gathered around.
“Paul,” said the Deputy Director, “I’m in the No-dong camp, using their radio through the TAC SAT up in the hills. South Koreans had taken over-we lost Bass Moore getting it back. Colonel Ki-Soo here is being very cooperative … but he does not know the cancel code. The South Koreans changed it, and they’re dead. We’ve got just over eight minutes until the things take off, headed for Tokyo.”
“Not enough time to bring in planes from the South or North,” Hood said.
“Exactly.”
“Give me a minute,” Hood said and punched up Matt Stoll on the computer. “Matty, bring up the file on the Nodongs. How do we stop them without a password?”
Stoll’s face disappeared, replaced with the Nodong file. He scrolled through, past schematics and lists of specifics.
“Control circuits encased in two inches of steel to protect during launch… let me see. We’ve got three rows of numerals. The top row is a countdown clock. Middle row is the launch coordinates. The four numbers that allow you to change the target remain on display for one minute after inputting. That gives you a chance to change them before they lock in. After that, four numbers appear in the bottom row serving as a kind of double-lock system. You can’t get to the middle numbers unless you input the bottom row first They leave after a minute too. So… all you have to do is set the first four numbers, the middle numbers, at zero-zero-zero-zero and they won’t fire.”
“But you need to get into the program to do that.”
“Correct.”
“And we don’t have that second set of four numbers.”
“In that case, you can’t do anything. And to input every possible combination of four numbers from zero through nine would take-”
“I’ve got about seven minutes.”
“-longer than that,” Stoll said. Suddenly his voice brightened. “Hold on a second, Paul. I may have something.”
The Nodong file disappeared, replaced with a photograph of the site.
“Give me a second,” Stoll said.
Over the phone, Hood heard the keys of Stall’s computer clicking. He looked at the countdown clock. He wanted to reach out and put his palms on the numbers, slow them down, give them more time to do this. Once again, to have come so far only to fail, for all those lives to have been wasted, was something you never found in the job description.
“Martha,” Hood said while Stoll worked, “you’d better call Burkow at the White House. Brief him: the President may have to put in a call to Tokyo.”
“Oh, they’re both going to love that,” Martha said as she walked to the door.
“I’ll buzz you in your office when I have news,” Hood said.
Bob Herbert said, “I have faith that somehow, the U.S. is going to end up getting blamed for everything that’s happened today.”
“Today’s not over,” Hood found himself pep-talking, refusing to allow himself to believe that the final gun had been fired.
Hood continued to watch the screen as the picture of the Nodongs was enlarged and enhanced. One of the missiles became larger by a factor of ten every five seconds.
“Damn, I’m good,” Stoll said. “You see what we’ve got down there, Paul?”
“The Nodongs-”
“Yes, but this is the photograph I took when we came back on-line,” Stoll said.
Hood learned forward. “You are brilliant, you son of a bitch.” He examined the screen and frowned. “Shit!”